Samuel Aranda's Award Winning Photo
An amazing, moving, deep photo. (via. Huffington-Post)
Samuel Aranda Wins World Press Photo Of The Year Award For Arab Spring Shot
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press
AMSTERDAM — Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award Friday for an image of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen.
Jurors said Aranda’s photo, taken for The New York Times, encapsulated many facets of the uprisings across the Middle East known as the Arab Spring, one of the major news events of the year.
The photo was taken Oct. 15 in a mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, that was being used as field hospital after demonstrators protesting the rule of Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh clashed with government forces.
“The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on,” said chairman Aidan Sullivan. “We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East.”
The woman is almost completely concealed under black robes as she clasps her relative, a thin man whose torso is bare, grimacing in pain.
Sullivan said Aranda thought the man might have been the woman’s husband, but he was not sure. He said the image has religious “almost Biblical” overtones and noted its resemblance in composition to Michelangelo’s Pieta – but in a Muslim setting.
“It stands for Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, for all that happened in the Arab Spring,” said juror Koyo Kouoh. “But it shows a private, intimate side of what went on, and it shows the role that women played, not only as caregivers but as active people in the movement.”
February 10th, 2012 at 11:35 am
Wow! Moving!
February 10th, 2012 at 1:14 pm
@Al I agree it is pretty moving.
February 10th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Aww :’( may peace reign
February 10th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Orientalism at its best.
February 10th, 2012 at 8:04 pm
The tears, they are veiled. Tears for the people oppressed by tyranny. How many tears that are unseen by us. Flowing with blood of the weak.Flowing with the silence of the watchful eyes.
February 10th, 2012 at 10:30 pm
I’m pretty sure that after Spencer see this, he will claims that this women has been raped by that man and that man forced her to hug her because the man is a pervert!!! LOLZ!!! What do you guys think?
February 10th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
I want the Syrian people and all Muslims to be free and to be able to fully abide by/follow Islam, in all places and at all times.
I want Muslims and the Islamic world to flourish and to be free from suffering at the hands of corruption, Imperialism, poverty, and sickness.
Though personally I am agnostic, if God does exist then may He make manifest the above….
Amen
February 11th, 2012 at 1:49 am
amen, QA.
But the feminists will say “Arab Spring still has not done the women any good as evidenced by the burqa.”
February 11th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Prudence, and not modesty alone, might dictate that her face is covered and his, concealed. And I say there is no need for gratuitous snarkiness about feminists: it says more about the head problems of the speaker than those of any hypothetical women.
February 12th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Which kind of Niqab is this? Cause it sure looks like more of a facial bandage than a Niqab, we can’t even see her eyes for God sake. But I’ll have to agree with @Qster, there is a Orientalism spin in this photograph.
February 13th, 2012 at 6:02 am
In the eyes of every human being we see joy, sadness, happyness, sorrow…
It is very difficult to say what a person feels or how does one feel without seeing his/her eyes…
Yet, without seeing her eyes we understand she is full of sorrow…
February 14th, 2012 at 4:02 pm
She is looking down… and I own (though do not wear) a niqaab that does conceal my eyes as well… but anyway… pointless addition I know…